1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an improvement to the doors of aircraft cabins.
2. Description of the Related Art
These cabin doors in general have a complex closing/opening movement that combines a vertical shift and a drawing-together movement, which has had the result that a flexible, inserted part, which is called a guard, is frequently located on the outside of the door. This part is shaped so as to come into contact with the cabin of the airplane slightly before the closing of the door and so as to bend elastically during the closing.
While being flexible, this guard should be rigid enough not to separate from the wall of the cabin at high speed, under the effect of aspiration of the boundary layer.
For these various reasons, the guards that are currently used consist of an aluminum strip.
The results that are obtained by these guards that are made of an aluminum strip, however, are not entirely satisfactory.
Actually, these guards exhibit the drawbacks below:
First, it has been proven that at the end of about 5,000 maneuvers of the door, or about 3 years, the guard loses its qualities of elastic resistance and detaches from the cabin during flight.
In addition, these guards are not thick enough to make it possible to house means there that make it possible to detach them easily.
In the French Patent 2,789,144 of Feb. 3, 1999, an elastomer seal, inside which a rigid or elastic reinforcing structure is placed, was described.
Such an arrangement is powerless to provide a solution to the problem that is posed by the sealing of the doors of aircraft cabins.
The seal according to said Patent FR 2,789,144 is designed for a stationary panel that rests on the structure of the aircraft via said seal: such a support is static, whereas the guard according to the invention is designed to be maneuvered thousands of times during which the guard will slide against the structure.
In contrast, the support of the seal of the Patent FR 2,789,144 is linear, whereas it is necessary that the support of the guard of a door be along a surface.